


The Ballad of Saeki Hood and His Merrie Men

by rockbrigade



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robin Hood, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-13 07:59:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10509618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockbrigade/pseuds/rockbrigade
Summary: Rokkaku Robin Hood AU. Saeki and Rokkaku are outlaws in Medieval England, and through noble acts of unlawful deeds, they win the hearts of the people. They take from the rich and give to the poor, and they do what they can to overthrow the government! Multiple chapters, more to come!!Started writing this as my fill for the Harumeku Tenipuri exchange only to find out that... only completed fics would be accepted. I drew the characters as they appear in this fic for the exchange instead (here)! So these two works are related!





	1. Passion Arrow

Come one, come all, and gather round  
And listen to my tale  
Of how Saeki nearly found  
His own good self in jail

But in jail he ended not  
For he was Saeki "Hood"  
And so away from justice fled  
To live in that green wood

 

It was on a day much like this one -- a green and balmy morning in the merry month of May. In those times, brave Saeki Hood was a mere lad of 15 years, but he was by nature good, and warm like the sun that did dapple through the trees, and refreshing as the wind that bore him on his way to Nottingham in search of glory. These were the days of the petulant Prince-King, Mizuki, to whom every ounce of villainy and treachery in the being of that much-dreaded Kite, then Sheriff, was woefully devoted. Some have said that if Prince-King Mizuki were the velvet glove, then Sheriff Kite was the iron fist, but I would contend that they both, indeed, knew well their own exteriors and interiors, and moreover when and how to strike, and upon whom to strike it. Upon one of these days, when Sheriff Kite found it right and humorous to lure the most able men from the whole countryside around to the great city, there to test themselves at the sport of shooting, and in the process recruit himself an ally or two; upon one such day as this, it was bold Saeki Hood who heard, in his distant village, of the challenge and the prize to be won.

Saeki leant against the stone gatepost, one foot braced back against the bricks, and supporting his weight on the left side with his arm propped up on the head of his longbow. He looked down the slope to the pastures, letting the breeze of the hilltop tug on his hair, so that he had to alternate between shielding his eyes from the bright midday sun and scraping his fringe out of them as he watched the figure on the green below. The shepherd took great fistfuls of feed from the bag under his arm, and stepping back from the flock as they followed him, he scattered the feed around and bleated happily at the sheep in reply. "Baaa! You're welcome!" the sound of his chuckles lifted their way up to Saeki at the gate. Finally, the shepherd dusted his hands, and began to climb the hill with broad strides, folding the empty bag over his arms as he came. And the wind lifted his hair, and caused him to look up, and notice Saeki at the gate. "Sae!" He said, with that pleasant huff of air he was known to give when he encountered a friend. This was, of course, the one remembered in legend as Maid Marehiko, but he was always known to our hero as simply--

"Icchan! I heard something incredible in the village!" Saeki pushed himself off the post with a little hop, and reached down a hand to help Icchan over the steepest part of the hill. Icchan shot him a weary glance, and took Saeki's hand with a groan, but Saeki went on, "They're holding a contest to find the best archer in all the land! The prize is one hundred pounds and the finest shot money can buy in Nottingham or anywhere! One hundred pounds! And it's as good as mine, Icchan!"

Icchan managed to bite his cheek, close the pasture gate behind them, and dust the scraps of feed and muck from his tunic, before turning his tired look onto Saeki once more. Icchan sighed through his nose, "Not this again, Sae… You know those contests are a scam, right? Collecting the prize--" 

"It's not a scam! Not this one, Icchan, I'd know--" 

"To collect the prize you've gotta… sign this thing, this army thing--" 

"I wouldn't sign any weird thing, I'd just," Saeki frowned and glanced to the side. He moved his hands like he was carrying an invisible box towards his chest, "I'd just… take the prize… and go home." The glint of adventure in his eyes showed that, to him, this was a foolproof counter-argument. An unbeatable plan. 

Icchan chewed his lip, but his objections forced their way up through him like a bolt of static, "No, Sae… That Sheriff? He's been forcing men from their homes to join his… secret militia, or something. He holds these contests to, to… he's trying to lure you out! It's not worth it, Sae, that city is a bad place, okay?" He pointed the tip of his incredible nose most earnestly at Saeki, brow furrowed, and waited for his answer. 

"Okay," Saeki said, carefully, "Okay, yeah. I mean, maybe you're right." Saeki's shoulders dropped. He kicked the grass where he stood and looked down at his shoe so that his hair fell over his face, "I mean. I probably wouldn't've won, anyway…" 

"Don't be silly, Sae! Of course you'd win! I don't know anyone who can beat you at archery! I bet you could even take out that nasty Sheriff if you got a good shot at him!" 

"Exactly, I never miss my mark!" Saeki said, that glint of adventure suddenly back in his eye. Icchan swallowed hard. 

"So… not like you need a silly contest to… prove that, right," Icchan laughed nervously. Saeki's eyes were shimmering, and he looked at his bunched up fists. "Sae? You know I was just… trying to--" 

And history well knows how Saeki Hood heeded the wise words of his dear friend, because before the dawn had reached that self-same sleepy village, Saeki's feet were crunching through the forest-bed on the trail to Nottingham town, with his finest quiver and trusty bow strapped to his back. While he walked, he spread his fingers out so the wind could twine through them, and he whistled to himself a tune of victory, and in his mind he thought of how fair Maid Marehiko would be moved to see him home again, and boasting the great prize to boot. Well, perhaps, it is, that good Saeki never reached wicked Nottingham, for they have said that many a worthy archer was spirited away from that place, on that very day, beguiled into the service of Sheriff Kite. No, it was to a different destiny that bold Saeki Hood was summoned, when upon a clearing of the wood he met with foresters three -- blue-clad and merrymaking under the shade of a great tree. 

The shadows that fell after the trees began to slant in the direction of the afternoon, and Saeki drew his sleeve across his forehead to dry it. He took his water from where it was hooked on his belt and tilted it up into his mouth… and with a frown, turned his face up under it and shook only a few drops onto his tongue. Saeki sighed. He attached the bottle to his belt again, and slowly turned his head about, cupping a hand to his ear, to listen for signs of water. A low murmur of something started to break upon the twittering of birds and the gentle rush of the wind through the trees, and Saeki steeled himself against the heat of the day and set off in the direction of the noise. 

The trees started to thin in front of Saeki, and with a sudden blast of volume he discovered the source of the murmur. Before him lay a great clearing, with a large, old tree at the centre. Three men, each in his own royal-blue coat, lay sprawled about in the shade, laughing and drinking great flagons of some rather suspicious liquid. Their juice -- for lack of a better word -- was every colour found in the spectrum of the forest, and the head frothed as by some supernatural power. Nevertheless, Saeki, who was a braver man than many to be found in that wood, thought it still at least a liquid, and therefore sufficient to quench his thirst. He adjusted his grip on his bow and his quiver, and strode towards the tree. 

"Hello, um, pardon me!" Saeki said, with a soft laugh, "I've just come from the village down there," he pointed down the path he had taken, "and I'm heading to Nottingham for the Sheriff's contest, have you heard about it?" 

The blue-coated men stopped laughing. One of them, lying with his head supported by a huge tree root, swung his arms and sat forward, inhaling through his nose with a sharp snort. "Heard about the contest? Of course," he spat and narrowly missed Saeki's shoe. Saeki frowned at the offended piece of grass in sympathy. "I don't live under a rock!" He stressed the word, I, and Saeki bit his lip to stop himself from… well, from telling this man he wasn't being very nice. 

"Hey, Arai, what a joke. Look at this guy!" A second of the men had sat forward now and waved the back of his hand in Saeki's direction, sneering back at the first, "Seriously, this weedy dude thinks he can pull back a bowstring??" The three men howled with laughter, and Saeki felt the heat of his pride flush up in him with his blood. 

"Im-imagine…!" The third man could barely get his words out through his laughter, "If… if… he pulls the string, he goes--" his arm pointed out in a fast straight line away from him, and he made a little whooshing noise, and positively wheezed at his own joke. 

"Ikeda, that's hilarious," Arai said, in choice moments between laughs, "I really think we ought to see a dude fly today, am I right, Hayashi?" The three men were bent double, and bent close in to one another, each with their arms hugging their sides, and Saeki realised they were stone drunk off whatever they had in their keg and flagons. Not that he felt any less insulted. 

"Sorry, was that you three challenging me? Questioning my ability to shoot, is that right?" Saeki hoisted his bow off his back and leant against it, his other hand on his hip. Arai snorted again and gave a muffled, huh? "So if you're doubting me, how about we make a little game out of this?" And Saeki turned on his heel to look around the clearing for a good target. On the far horizon he could pick out quite easily, a herd of deer grazing under the trees. "How about 30 pounds says I can't hit the finest hart out of that herd, from the spot where I'm standing?" 

And of course, the three, dizzy from their drinking, and with eyes that were not as clear as Saeki's, murmured to one another, what deer? What hart? But Arai spoke up, "Alright, then! I'm not one to turn down free money! 30 pounds says you can't hit the finest hart -- or better yet, any hart out of your supposed herd!" He chuckled and nudged Hayashi, who then added,

"But we haven't got all day! Once we're finished here we have to make our own way to Nottingham. So how's about we add a penalty to every arrow -- say 10 pounds per shot!" and Arai cut in to say, ooh, nice one!, "Don't you waste your precious arrows now, trying to hit any fantastical deer!" 

They laughed, but Saeki let them. He turned stiff on his heel, so quick that he was noiseless. First he stretched his arms, and then his shoulders; then, he pulled a delicate arrow from his quiver and strung it tight against the bow. He inhaled, and holding his breath within him watched the arrow's sight until he had his mark, and then, with a sharp pluck that rippled the air by his ear, he let the arrow fly, and saw it cut down its target like a lightning bolt from above. The three men sat forward from their tree, jaws gaping, and Arai stumbled to his feet. Saeki watched him shade his eyes with his hand and take a few unsteady steps towards where the herd had been. 

"Holy Lady of all that is good…!" Arai said, in a stunned whisper. He wheeled on Saeki and gaped at him in horror and awe. 

Saeki chuckled, and lowered his bow, and shrugged with a kind of fake modesty. "So. What was that? 30 pounds I couldn't hit the deer? 30 pounds from the three of you," he pointed his finger at each of them in turn, "plus 10, the fee for the arrow, means I'm owed 100 pounds! Excellent, cough up, gents!" He smiled with the best of humour, but his smile was not returned. 

"You little punk! No way you're getting anything, don't even kid yourself!" Arai spat, and this time, he hit Saeki. 

"Arai…" Ikeda said, getting to his feet, now, too, "He just shot the King's deer? He could hang for this," it was as they said this, as the three of them stepped out of the tree's shade, that Saeki could see plainly the insignia of the royal foresters on their coats. Foresters whose pay was made in catching the poachers of the King's deer. Saeki gulped and began to walk backwards. Slowly. 

"Catch him!!" Arai yelled, and the swing of his arm missed Saeki's hood by inches. Saeki sprinted off for the trees, but behind him he heard Arai's voice, "Let go of me!!" 

And then Hayashi's, "Let him go! He's as good as dead if he sets foot near the city, on our word! Get it? He'll owe his life to us, he's worth mor--" 

An arrow split the air just millimetres from Saeki's face, and his ear rang with it. Arai had missed. Saeki turned and bent his bow back at the men, "And you say I'M the one who can't shoot!" For the last time in that clearing, an arrow was loosed. 

And that is how, the legends say, brave Saeki once of a humble village came to be He of great renown, for noble acts of unlawful deeds, the merry warden of the forest deep. No longer could he dwell with other men inside town or city, for the writ was heavy upon his head, and the bounty great. But how he came to be beloved by all persons downtrod in all the great land, we shall hear exactly, by and by.


	2. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bold outlaw Saeki Hood has been living in the woods for six months, surviving on the game of the forest and passing his time by robbing journeymen who pass through the trail. But on a snowy morning, who should so happen to pass through the wood but two men -- one old friend, one new -- and together start brave Saeki Hood off on his quest to become more than just a notorious outlaw, but a hero as well!

Alone and friendless was that gent,  
Saeki of the trees,  
Until by chance he met a friend,  
In Sir Fuji At The Lee

And also he, so clad in red,  
By loving hearts inspir'd,  
Kentaroh Scarlett, strong of head,  
Into the wood retir'd 

Now, good friends, as I once again take up my lyre, I would have you bethink of our hero, Saeki Hood, brave and bold, and fair of face (for fair he is, or so it is said), and bethink ye how he spent six moons or more under that green canopy. Alone he was, indeed, but for the singing of the wood and the babbling of the river; and, too, the shouting of the great rock caverns where he dwelt as the nights grew thick with cold and mischief. Nights in that wood were black as death itself, but good Saeki had eyes so keen as to pick out the stars from the great map of skies above, and thus he came to know his way among the rocks and ravines that would have felled a lesser fellow. A friend he had in the beasts he trapped, for they were both food and cloth to him; but no friend had he ever in a journeyman who had such misfortune as to trespass the trail under his watch. For it was said at that time, that no man could ever enter the forest with a purse on his belt, and expect to leave again with all its contents untouched. 

On such a morning, Saeki awoke to find the sounds of the forest muffled by snow, but yet, in the steady rumbling of the cave that was his home, he recognised the approach of hooves. Saeki gathered his bow and his shot -- by now he was relying upon the forest's resources, and so his quiver was full of ammunition irregular enough that one might hesitate to call them arrows -- and hastened out to catch the forest trail from his favourite high vantage point. But cutting, as he did, through canopy branches and over crumbling mounds of rock, another sound intruded itself upon Saeki's ears. It was the sound of a young man's scream. Saeki clung to the precipice with fingers wet and numbed by the snow, and felt his whole body numb as the voice jumped up from the trail below to meet him. Then in another moment, as if awoken to his senses by some higher power, Saeki scrambled his way to the point on the cliff where all the forest floor lay within his sight, and waited. 

Saeki's heart thudded in his ears, and with eyes too focused to risk closing, he saw each throb peripherally in shining blue flourishes. He hushed, too, his own breath, and the chill morning froze in his chest as he waited. His finger grew impatient, hooked around his bowstring, and should any such unlucky creature have happened upon Saeki in that moment, it was sure they would have found themselves conversing with the saints in the next. Then, bursting into view, like fresh blood pouring out onto the snow, a young man, bedecked from head to foot in fine red cloth, staggered over the trail. His wails for mercy were only bested in volume by the terrible hooves of a pure white horse bearing down upon him. Yes, and the rider of this creature was clad in the same blue finery Saeki remembered on the three foresters who had caused his banishment. It was a surging of Saeki's loneliness, perhaps, or of his anger at being subjected to his life in the wood, but as the horses' front hooves reared above the cowering figure in red, an arrow sent from above split the tree beside the horse's head. Startled, the horse bucked its rider and fled into the forest. 

Saeki pulled his hood over his head, and standing ready with his bow, said (with the kind of instinct to make his voice a different, almost comically gravelly pitch), "Stand down, let the boy go!" 

Down on the trail there was much confusion, but it was the kind of quiet confusion that well suited a silent snowy scene. The man in red stared at Saeki. The man in blue dusted the snow off his shoulders, then stared at Saeki. Then, as if they hadn't been the greatest of enemies just moments before, the man in red and the man in blue exchanged confused looks, each shaking their heads and shrugging at the other. Saeki knew it was his moment to descend onto the trail himself, but found his feet less sure on the way down, and with each stunt, felt the eyes of the two below bearing into him ever more tirelessly. Once, his foot slipped off a branch in a near-miss, and he had to cling harder to his handhold, and swing his body to keep himself from falling, and at such a time one of the two voices from below called out, "Hey, be careful!" 

And when both Saeki's feet were back on solid earth, the two he had so rudely interrupted gave him a moment to recover his composure, and then with an exchange of nods all round, Saeki aimed his arrow at the man in blue, putting himself in between the hunter and the hunted. "I said, stand down!" Saeki said, in his newly-adopted growl, and the man in blue put his white-gloved hands out in front of him to indicated he was no threat. He was smiling, a soft, somewhat menacing smile, and he tilted his head to let his fringe fall over his face a little way, and Saeki gasped because he knew this man, and the man chuckled because he knew Saeki, too. 

"Goodness… this is an awful coincidence," he said, and his eyes cracked open with a question in them, "Saeki? That is you, isn't it?" 

Saeki cleared his throat, and lowered his bow, and, with yet more reluctance, pulled the hood off his head. "Sir Fuji," he said, looking at his feet shuffling prints into the snow. 

"It is you! How long has it been?" He chuckled again, a hand poised at his chin. He nodded his head to look over Saeki's shoulder at the man in red, "Ahh, you see. Saeki and I know each other. We were pages together for the knights that serve the King… along with my younger brother," he said this last with a sigh in his voice, but he continued, "And we three were the greatest of friends for a time, but Saeki left the knight's service and returned home." Saeki turned his head, and found the man in red nodding uncertainly with his mouth gaping open. "I have never forgotten you, though. I'm sure Yuuta would wish to have met you again, too." Fuji frowned as he said this, and his head seemed to nod, like he was passing his eyes (his closed eyes) all the way over Saeki's countenance and secretly analysing it. 

Saeki looked down at himself, too. He was dressed in the mish-mash of animal skin and rags of the clothing he'd left his village in, six months before. His skin was mottled with the dirt of the wood, and he was certain his hair had lost its lustre. And in front of him was Sir Fuji, in his finest royal blue; behind him a young man in a beautiful outfit of red silk; and Saeki wondered only now what that smell was and whether the others had noticed it. 

A small gasp burst up from behind Saeki. Then, it morphed into another blood-curdling wail. Saeki and Fuji turned around in alarm to witness the gaping mouth of the man in red, and to see his pointer finger waving about in front of him as he gestured to the spot where Saeki stood. Saeki looked behind him, to see Sir Fuji looking over his own shoulder at nothing. They turned back. "YOU'RE Saeki Hood??" said the man in red. He staggered to his feet, not taking his eyes off Saeki for a second, almost swaying with shock. 

"W-well, I am Saeki…?" Saeki said, albeit not sounding so sure himself, "Sorry, do I know you?" The man in red let out another startled noise, and then put himself into a fighter's stance. He drew a little rapier from his belt, and it glinted against the white of the snow. 

"I know you! My name is Kentaroh, and I have travelled many long nights to find you, Saeki Hood!" There was a fearsome look in Kentaroh's eyes as he spoke. "I lost my own true love because of this man called Saeki Hood! The devil himself would not stop me from finding you!" Saeki frowned at him, and then turned to look at Fuji, who was simply watching them with his head tilted. 

"I'm starting to think I picked the wrong side, when I entered this thing," Saeki said, and Fuji smiled sympathetically. But Saeki raised his bow so that the very tip of the arrow was level with Kentaroh's eyes, and he said, "I know nought of what you speak, for I don't believe we have met before on this Earth. If you've come to fight me, I shall oblige. But know this: once my target has been marked, they cannot escape me!" 

"What!" Kentaroh's yelp was shrill enough to send the nesting birds nearby fluttering off for warmer climes, "No no no no, I don't want to fight you!" His sword arm drooped so he was defenceless.

There was a soft laugh from behind Saeki. "A bit awkward. Um. I would perhaps be the one who wants to fight you." Fuji raised his palm in a little wave and smiled. 

"Whaaat, but you just said you go way back!" Kentaroh said, before Saeki had any chance to feel betrayed himself, "Shame on you!" 

"Yeah, Sir Fuji, that's not very nice!" Saeki folded his arms quite awkwardly over the frame of his bow that he still gripped. 

"Calm down, Saeki! I said 'perhaps'." But Saeki scowled like he didn't fancy those odds. Fuji laughed, and then sighed. He drew his own sword from his belt, and with his arms raised high over his head in surrender, tossed it into the snow. "Might you hear what I have to say? Before any one of us acts too hastily." 

Saeki exchanged looks with Kentaroh, and the two of them also dropped their weapons. There, they negotiated a truce, and reconciled to build up a fire, to sit around as they talked. The three weapons were placed in a pile, a little ways from the fire and from the trail, far enough that none of the three could move to grab one, but near enough that each could keep an eye on them. Then, they sat around the fire, clapping their hands together and holding them to the smouldering air, and Kentaroh stamped his feet against the earth, and Fuji began to speak of how he got to where he was. 

True it was of those days, that many a good word was spoken about the brothers Fuji. Loyal knights of the King's guard, stalwart in courage and masters of the art of war -- where the elder excelled in the latter, the younger was no less worthy for the former, and it is said that the King himself commended no two men higher than these honourable brothers. Many a year the brothers fought side by side in the name of King and country; but such a time came that their parting was inevitable. The elder found his service still, at the King's side, a fitting protector most needed in those bloody crusades which first took our True and Rightful King away from these lands. The younger, however, was to be required in service to our people, under the governance of the Prince-King, whose treachery to our realm was all too quickly made evident, and to whose follies Sir Fuji the younger had unwittingly fallen a-foul. When the elder brother was bade to return to the lands of his birth, he soon found how the wicked Prince-King had misused his brother, and hastened to the capital. But the Prince-King forbade the two brothers to be reunited, and even sent the younger brother up to Nottingham by cover of nightfall, to bind his duties to the castle there, and never leave its walls. 

Fuji drew one of the longer sticks from the fire and used it to poke the embers. His eyes were open as he stared into its orange core, so when Saeki looked at him, he saw the flames reflected in the sharpness of Fuji's eyes. "I wear this blue coat," he said, quite offhand in tone, "because I am in service to the King. I am in service to this country, and would lay down my life a thousand times to protect it. And as such," he sighed, and looked up from the flames, smiling again, though Saeki thought it not without effort, "I did of course petition to the Prince-King, that I should very much like to see my brother again. And that I should go to great pains to do so. Funny, isn't it? That my loyalty to a worthy king brought me to pledging my loyalty to an unworthy one." 

Saeki roused himself enough to ask, "What did he have you do? What is it you must do to see Yuuta again?" Fuji's laugh was not without its bitterness. 

"Nothing -- that is, I don't suppose there is anything I can do in service to the Prince-King which would allow me to see Yuuta freed." Here, Fuji paused, turning the stick over in his hand as he considered, "but what that pretender to the throne would have me do is another answer entirely. Every sort of duty, small or large, he lays before me -- between my brother and me -- and every such task I complete yields yet more tasks." He closed his eyes and shook his head, "I shan't bore you with the grizzly particulars, the Saeki I knew was not a one for political intrigue," Fuji shot Saeki a sly look, and Saeki smiled back, but with a frown to show he thought himself ill-used in his friend's estimations, "but as for the moment, it's just 'a small matter of dealing with those upstart outlaws who are the scourge of the north', to borrow a phrase." Fuji smiled at Saeki, and waited for that to sink in. 

"Wait… you mean…?" and Saeki pointed uselessly to himself, and watched Fuji nod with satisfaction. "You've come for my bounty?" 

"No, I've come for HIS," Fuji raised the stick and pointed the blazing end at Kentaroh, who had been listening with shimmering eyes for some time, and now seeing the attention turn to him, he inhaled a smoky gasp and immediately coughed it out again, "but seeing the infamous Hooded Outlaw is fortunate indeed." He laughed, and Kentaroh waved his arms in front of himself. 

"N-no no no, wait! I'm not like, an outlaw or anything? I just-- my love, she said--!" 

"Oh, I see," and Fuji chuckled into his hand, "then you are a thief with the gall to live within the city walls?" 

"I-I'm not a thief!" Kentaroh said, forehead creased indignantly, "I-I mean, not like a REAL thief… I only took a couple of purses--" Saeki turned to him and raised his eyebrows, so Kentaroh turned his petition back on Saeki, "My true love, she said! W-when I came a-courting, she said she had fallen in love with the most handsome outlaw in all the land, Saeki Hood, and that if I truly loved her I would try to be as dashing as him." 

Saeki opened his mouth, then closed it again. He pointed his finger at Kentaroh in a vague, wagging movement, "So… when you said you'd travelled many long nights to find me…?" 

"I WAS HOPING TO LEARN FROM YOU!!" Kentaroh's volume was loud enough to send several small creatures on the woodland floor scurrying for safety. "My love lost her heart to you… so that means I lost to you… but maybe if I learned from you, next time I would win--!" 

Here, Fuji interjected, "And the purses? What became of them?" Kentaroh looked hopeless against the sickly-sweetness of Fuji's smile. He scratched the back of his head. 

"I wasn't really sure about it… but my love, she said she might bestow a favour upon me if I was brave like Saeki Hood, and brought her stolen purses!" Kentaroh clenched his fist in the air, "So I said, if I can't bring my love stolen purses, I'll be doomed to an eternity of loneliness!! And then I got fired up, you see! I must've brought her ten purses or more before I was caught!" He stuck his chest out, and Saeki could see it swelling with pride. 

"She conned you," Saeki said, and Fuji said,

"She was using you," at exactly the same time. 

"W-what…" Kentaroh said, "No, she wouldn't do that! She's the nicest, prettiest…" but the tears were starting to form, and Saeki reached over to give him a solid pat on the shoulder. As he did, he saw Kentaroh's face contort for the briefest of moments. 

"Congratulations on getting your wish, you've become a true outlaw. Unfortunately..." Fuji frowned through his smile, and Saeki cut in,

"So, what now? Will you hand us in for the bounty?" Saeki leaned forward, and just then the wind picked up behind him, and Fuji spluttered suddenly. 

"Ah, I'm sorry, Saeki, mightn't we switch places? I--" but he didn't have an ending to that sentence. 

"Um. Okay, I guess?" Saeki said, cautiously getting to his feet and circling the fire. Fuji circled it by the opposite side to him, and sat down where Saeki had been, with a nod of thanks. 

"Phew, that's um, that's better." Saeki shrugged at Kentaroh, but Kentaroh avoided his eyes. "That's right, as a member of the royal guard and a knight of the realm, it's my duty, isn't it. To capture outlaws and deliver them to justice," Fuji placed the tip of his finger on his cheek, and tilted his head as he spoke, "But… I have no heart to lose yet another worthy warrior -- yet another true friend -- to the wishes of a vile man who is a traitor to his country." 

"You mean you'll let us go!?" Kentaroh said, in the highest pitch discernible to human ears, "I can go home!? My sweet love will be so pleased!" 

"Unfortunately, that's impossible," Fuji said, with a slight, sympathetic chuckle, "I don't intend to hand you over to your enemy and mine, but you can never go home," Kentaroh cut in with a shrill burst of, NEVER??, but Fuji spoke on in his calm and gentle way, "only the King has the authority to pardon a wanted criminal. From now on, you will never be safe in any town or city where the agents of the law might find you." 

Kentaroh's mouth was agape. He sat with his back straight, showing all his teeth to anyone who might have seen them. He even flashed his disbelief at the tree nearest to him, as if it might stand to be appalled along with him. "So… I have to live…?" 

"Taking refuge in the wood, like Saeki has done, is probably your safest bet." Kentaroh's face contorted again, and the tears welled up in his eyes again, and he sobbed with a great and terrible noise that was unsettling, it seemed, to brave Saeki and even to that good Sir Fuji who had seen many a horrible thing in the Holy Land. 

"It's not a bad life," Saeki said, as gentle as he could, but Kentaroh's tears didn't stop. 

"You're covered in manure and you smell like a horse's rear end!!" he said, truly heartbroken. Fuji looked at Saeki and nodded as if to say, he's right. 

"But on the plus side, I'm not dead!" Saeki tried showing Kentaroh his most winning smile, but this time it won nothing. 

"Y-yeah, and besides!" Fuji reached his hands out towards Kentaroh to soothe him, "Didn't you say your lady wanted a… a… rugged… wilderness man? A-an outlaw, like Saeki who drinks his own pee, or something…?" 

"What," said Saeki, but Kentaroh's wails drowned him out.

"I'M LESS POPULAR THAN A GUY WHO DRINKS HIS OWN PEE!" utterly defeated, Kentaroh wept into his hands, and through his palms came the words, "a-and n-now I have to d-drink MY own pee, a-and now I get to smell l-like a h-horse a-and no girls will ever love me ever b-because most girls ha-have noses!" His sentence finished abruptly in a mournful snort.

Fuji sighed softly and shook his head, and Saeki muttered, "I don't drink my own pee." 

Then, amongst the air of misery, Fuji clapped his hands together and said, "Ah, that's it!" and then he turned quite eagerly to Kentaroh, "Listen, it's true you'll have to live out in the wood for a while--" this message reinforced prompted a reinforced burst of woe from poor Kentaroh, "-- BUT, it’s only until the rightful King can safely return to his kingdom and then we can get him to pardon you!" Fuji tilted his head to get a look at Kentaroh's face, "see? It won't be forever-- not if you agree to help me, anyway!" 

Kentaroh's wails quietened, and soon he was just sniffling and hiccupping, and he said, between gasps, "H-help… how?" Fuji straightened his back. He opened his eyes to give Saeki a grave look. 

"What I said before is true, I have no intention of handing you over to the Prince-King, but… if it is discovered that I helped you, I could find myself in quite a bit of trouble myself. That's why, the three of us," Fuji spread his arm over the fire to include all the present company in the conspiracy, "and some other loyal and true men -- loyal to the rightful King, that is -- that I have discovered in the ranks of the knighthood, we have to be the ones to return our king from exile. We have to be the ones to end the reign of the Prince-King." The forest grew silent, and only the fire crackled between them. 

Saeki was the first to speak, "so… if we help you… you can get us pardoned? For certain?" The few seconds of silence that followed, in which Fuji licked his lips and turned his face away, told Saeki everything. "I see. And if we refuse?" 

Fuji sat forward, leaning in to Saeki's direction as well he could with the fire still blazing between them. "Saeki… you are the finest marksman I have met, including the marksmen of the King's guard. I had no idea you were the hooded outlaw I've heard tell of." He looked up at the canopy of bare and snow-covered branches above him, standing out from the now-darkening white sky, "I had no idea you were living in this place. I had no idea you had -- that you had fallen foul of the law. But, as terrible it is of me to say it, I'm glad." Fuji opened his eyes again, and the flash of blue was harsh against the white surrounding him, "Because I need your skills. We all do - the country needs you." He seemed to stop, but then he added in a small whisper, "Yuuta needs you." 

Saeki leaned back, steadying himself with his hand thrust out behind him. He moved his head so his fringe fell over his face. He said, "I can't return to town or city. You said as much yourself. I can barely get the tools to hunt and feed myself, let alone fight alongside knights in an uprising." 

Fuji took the hint, "Anything you need you shall have. We have people in every town, and they will assist you." Saeki raised an eyebrow at him. "And weapons? You need weapons? Not half a day's walk from here is a village with a great mill at its centre. They say the finest shot and longbows ever made came from that village -- seek the help of the man who made them!" 

"I don't know…" Saeki began, and Kentaroh piped up for the first time since Fuji began his proposition. 

"Shelter. We need shelter -- I can't live in a cave! We'll die out here!" 

Fuji pushed himself off the ground, and brushed the snow off his leggings. He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. "I will get you food, blankets. Basic provisions. If I leave now I can be back before the sun sets. As a show of good faith." He looked over his shoulder as he said this last, and from somewhere in the wood came the steady thudding of horse hooves. 

"W-wait!" Saeki said, getting to his feet, "how do I contact you?" Fuji turned back to him and hummed thoughtfully. 

"Do you have -- or could you make, perhaps? -- a horn of sorts? Come as far as you can to the city and sound your horn three times. I'll have my contacts in town pass the message on to me, and I'll come to you as soon as I am able." He reached out and patted Saeki's arm as a sign of trust and fellowship, and then he took to his steed. With one last look on the lowly outlaws, he dug in his spurs and vanished, with a cloud of powdered snow kicking up behind him as he went. 

And so, the great annals of history denote, brave Saeki, once of great esteem for services to royalty, did pledge to uproot the Prince-King; that insidious weed that would grow and throttle the great realm in which we dwell. And Sir Fuji, who took good Saeki on his word, did set in motion that worthy cause, and so ignite the noble spirit that had laid sleeping in Saeki, lulled by his exile to the wood. Anon we shall hear how the two weary outlaws became the band now rejoiced o'er the realm known as The Merry Men, and how the fortunes of our true heroes began to change, for there is never true defeat where there is camaraderie.


	3. The Legendary Man! My Teacher!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's springtime again, and Saeki Hood and Kentaroh Scarlett head off on the first step of the mission Sir Fuji set them on: to find and recruit the weapons-master in the milling village. But on the way to meet this legendary man, they run into a bit of a hiccup. A very big hiccup, with a very big stick.

So to that mill Saeki henced,  
A master for to see;  
But that town was well defenc'd  
And none would win entry

For on a narrow bridge he stood,  
Little Bane was his name,  
And Saeki full into the flood  
a-flinging was his game

 

When last we heard of our hero, good Saeki Hood of the forest, and his reluctant, but daring companion Kentaroh Scarlett (so named for the fine colour he wore on the morn of his exile to the wood), the two were shivering amongst the black and bare-branched trees, for it was winter then, when all things must rest and make ready for the spring time. So, too, it was, for Saeki and poor Kentaroh, who were weakened by the cold, and starved by the uncharitable sleeping wood, and who were in no fit state to move in line with the plans of the genius Sir Fuji. Saeki and Kentaroh bided their time, fishing from the river through sheets of thick ice, and idling away the few hours of daylight practicing swordplay and marksmanship… and talking about girls. Finally, the merry trees began to bud anew, with little speckles of green and pink and white; the birds sang again and the young deer frolicked through the clearings, and Saeki made himself ready to petition the legendary weapons-master, of whom Fuji had spoken.

Kentaroh kicked earth into the campfire they had built outside the cave that was now their shared home. He stood up and stretched himself, hands on his hips and bending at the waist. Saeki had clambered onto the rock face above their cave and was about to let down a foliage net he had spent the last ten months weaving from branches and plants he plucked from the forest. Kentaroh watched as the green curtain covered the mouth to their cave and nodded to Saeki with satisfaction. "Looks good!" he said, with a wink and a good-spirited thumbs-up. Saeki chuckled as he jumped down to where Kentaroh was standing. 

"See? I told you," and Kentaroh nodded with acceptance. 

"I mean. Not like we've got anything worth stealing, but it makes me feel a little better about leaving," Kentaroh's voice had some small note of regret in it, and Saeki clapped him on the shoulder. 

"Starting to love the place, huh?" Saeki said, fishing up his longbow and dagger, and Kentaroh followed suit in strapping his weapons and provisions to his body and to his belt. "Besides, if Sir Fuji's word is good--" 

"I trust it is!!" Kentaroh chipped in with enthusiasm.

"--then we shouldn't be gone too long. Maybe sunrise tomorrow at the latest?" Saeki tilted his head and gave their cave one last, good, looking-over. "But, we've got to go. If we don't go, this old cave really will be our forever home." And as he said it, all the affection they held for the cramped and leaky hollow in the rock face, drained out of them both. Kentaroh pulled the corner of his mouth back and hummed. Saeki shrugged. "Yeah, the… the sooner we get ourselves pardoned, the better." 

They set off down the trail, Saeki careful to cover their tracks as they left as to ensure their hideout would remain undetected. Kentaroh walked and exclaimed loudly about their plans to overthrow the Prince-King. 

"Sir Fuji is sooo cool," he said, in what might've been a sigh had it been quiet enough, "It was so cool how he let us go like that! Hey, do you think if we fought him, we coulda won??" 

Saeki swallowed and frowned before he answered, "Well. Sir Fuji is one of the most competent swordsmen I've ever met…" 

"Oh my gosh, ISN'T he??" Kentaroh said, clenching his fists in front of his chest, not seeming to mind Saeki's lack of an answer. "I bet Sir Fuji gets tokens from every fair maiden he meets…" Kentaroh pursed his lips and fiddled with his fingertips, "Maybe I could get fair ladies to notice me, too, if I was a knight of the realm…" Saeki made no comment, but Kentaroh spun around so that he walked backwards through the wood! "Sae-san!" --for that was how Kentaroh Scarlett had come to know his trusty and only friend, Saeki Hood -- "What if I became a knight of the realm?? The girls would go crazy for me, right??" 

Saeki's shoulders dropped, because he hated using his sensible tone against the vibrant shimmer in Kentaroh's hopeful eyes, "But Ken, you know… you're an outlaw. There's no way for you to become a knight. Only the king can appoint knights." Kentaroh gasped so loudly even Saeki started to feel a tightness in his chest. 

"So… that means I just have to get pardoned and then I'll be a knight!!" Kentaroh's mouth was in the happiest u-shape Saeki had ever seen. Kentaroh gripped his hands together tightly in front of his chin and his eyes were positively radiant with excitement. Not that winning a pardon was a small matter, but there was also the matter of building a resistance, fighting and succeeding, overthrowing the Prince-King, restoring calm to the land of the Rightful King -- and the fact that knights are trained from boyhood as pages, then squires, and Kentaroh was now too old to train as a page, even if he did get a pardon from the king. 

But Saeki said, "If anyone can do it, Ken, it's you!" and his heart hurt a bit, because Kentaroh skipped and jumped with joy the whole rest of the trail until the trees began to thin out at the edge of the wood.

The two of them stood in the shade of the tree line, and Saeki scanned the road ahead for danger. It was early, and few carts passed by this stretch of road, so close to the wood, for fear of the ruthless outlaws that lurk within. Or, as the case was in this present moment, lurked in the shade, wondering if it was too early to eat lunch. Kentaroh plopped himself on the ground, with his back leant up against a tree, and he took out a small packet of dried, cooked fish and mushrooms from the wood, and licked his lips. Saeki, who had been shading his eyes with his hand and scanning the horizon, turned at the sound of crunching and put his hands on his hips. 

"Ken… we've only been walking for a couple of hours. Shouldn't you--" 

"But, Shae-shan," Kentaroh said, through his food, "Issh such a--" he swallowed his mouthful in a loud gulp, "It's such a nice day! With the birds, and the trees, and the sunshine… doesn't it make you want to have a picnic?" 

Saeki stared at him open-mouthed, because his answer was, yes, you're right, it really does, but he also knew they were perched on the edge of their safe zone and with the intention of straying half a day from it, on foot, and it really wasn't the-- "Yeah, I suppose you're right," Saeki said, dropping down to sit beside Kentaroh, and taking out his own parcel of food. "If we're about to leave the wood, this might be the last meal we get to eat in peace," Saeki said, thinking aloud. Kentaroh swallowed his food too soon and gagged, thumping at his windpipe with his clenched fist. 

"Wait," Kentaroh said, once he was recovered, "are you worried something could happen out there?" 

"No," Saeki said, before taking a bite of his food. They both chewed in an uneasy silence. "No, I just. Well, I guess you just never know what things are like for us outside of the wood." He gestured to the dirt road that lay a little ways in front of them, pointing to it with a handful of food, "I mean, once I get on that road, that'll be the furthest I've been away from the wood in almost a year!" 

"Ohhh, I see…" Kentaroh said, with mischief. Saeki frowned at him, so he bit into his lunch to mask his grin. 

"I'm not scared," Saeki said, folding his arms. 

"I didn't say that, Sae-san!"

"Yeah well, in case you were going to. I'm not. It's just," Saeki scanned the horizon again, swaying left and right where he sat to get a better scope, "It's just always good to be prepared." 

Kentaroh chewed the last mouthful of his food and dusted the crumbs off his hands. He glanced over his arm bracers, sweeping dust and dirt off them, eyebrows raised in a casual curve, "Maybe, maybe we don't need two of us to meet this master guy?" He glanced up at Saeki, shooting him a look that signified something, and Saeki narrowed his eyes and tried to figure out what it was. 

"Well… I suppose it might not need the both of us… I mean, it's not like we're planning on fighting anyone?" Saeki finished his lunch as well, and folded his arms as he regarded Kentaroh, "Why, are you saying we should… split up?" 

"Yeah, why not?" Kentaroh sprang to his feet with a sudden burst of energy, and then placed his hands on his knee, stretching each leg, one after the other, "I mean, shouldn’t one of us stay here…? To um, make sure no trespassers get through the wood without a toll? You know! Keep a lookout?" 

Saeki smiled without humour, "Oh, I see what you're getting at!" 

Kentaroh giggled and scratched the bridge of his nose, "You're onto me?" he said. 

"Hey, if you're worried about leaving the wood, it's okay for you to stay here until I get back," Saeki said, smiling his kindest, most understanding smile. Kentaroh made a noise of alarm that might have been a dog's bark, it was so sharp and loud.

"W-what! Nooo, no no no, Sae-san! I meant YOU could stay here!" Kentaroh was back to clenching his fists in front of his face, eyes shimmery, voice just like a puppy's whine. "I wanna do it! I'll go and find the master!!" 

Saeki frowned and smiled at the same time. He heaved himself off the ground and dusted himself off. "You wanna go alone? And I'll stay here? That's your big plan?" 

"I mean, isn't that what a cool knight like Sir Fuji would do??" Kentaroh had the biggest grin on his face. 

"Brave Sir Fuji told us to go. Brave Sir Fuji actually sent other people on to talk to this guy so he wouldn't have to?" Saeki raised his eyebrow at Kentaroh. 

"What! But…" Kentaroh's eyes flicked about as he thought about it. Saeki seized his moment, clapping Kentaroh on the shoulder and striding off towards the road.

"So, with that in mind, I'll trust you to keep a look out, collect the tolls and stuff!" He pointed a finger over his shoulder at Kentaroh, who was yelling a long, loud note of displeasure, "Good luck, brave Sir Kentaroh! Remember, I'll blow my horn three times when I want a knight in shining armour to save me!" Saeki shot Kentaroh a wink and skipped off towards the hill where his keen eyes could make out the large, beautiful sails of a great windmill. 

And so it was, that before the sun was at its hottest, Saeki approached the village with its mighty mill, raised on a great mound at the centre. He also discovered that between him and the town lay a fine river, flowing gently under a bridge too narrow to allow anything more than one person cross it at any one time. When Saeki's feet hit the river bank, he could see loose, brown earth in small pits at either side of the bridge, almost as if there had been, until recently, a more generous passage into the village, but that it had been uprooted for some most deliberate purpose. Saeki dipped his toe into the small pit and tested it, and thought to himself, here is where the bridge supports should be, but the bridge that lay in front of him was much smaller, and supported by two, much smaller, and hastily buried pegs in the river bank. And as Saeki looked up, over the bridge, he saw a tall man at the other side, by the village gate, stride quickly across it, 'til he stood, straight-backed and defiant at the centre, causing an impasse. He was holding a great, wooden staff, and he held it gripped lengthways, at arm's length away from his proud, strong chest. So narrow was the bridge, and so long was the staff, that the ends of the staff thus held were suspended over the water on either side. 

So Saeki cleared his throat and said, "Hey, excuse me? Would you mind stepping back, I need to enter the village," but the stance of this curious fellow had made him wary, and Saeki squared his shoulders, ready to draw on his longbow if he had to. 

"Sorry, no one gets into the village," said the man on the bridge, "not on my watch!" 

Saeki hummed to himself. "And… when does your watch end?" 

"Oh jeez, think that's funny? Go on, take a step closer and I'll smack you one!" Saeki thought about this. He paced left and right in front of the bridge. The river wasn't all too fast to swim, but he had no way of guessing how deep it was; besides, the staff the man held was surely wide enough to bar the village gate, and there were tough, but ramshackle wooden fences built all the way along the riverbank, that Saeki could not hope to traverse. His best hope was still, thus deterred, to cross the bridge, and so taking the man's advice, he set a foot down on the bridge, and pulled his longbow from his back, nocking an arrow against the bowstring and raising its point to the man that stood in front of him. 

"Stand down, or be struck down, for I need to get into the village at all costs!" --I should find it well to point out at this juncture that brave Saeki Hood of the forest had no real thought to kill this man, as he had threatened. Much as he felt his mission to be of the greatest importance, deep within him was the noble spirit that thought it not worth the life of another, especially not one who would make an unwitting sacrifice in the name of returning the Right and True King from his exile. So here I pause, before you gasp and shudder at the manner of our hero, to reassure that this was merely a ploy to gain him access to the weapons master of the village. And, as the staff-master will prove in his next utterance, an unsuccessful ploy, at that. 

"Strike me down then, coward!" Apart from a slight rolling of his thick neck, the man on the bridge did not budge an inch. "Who the heck brings a bow to a staff fight, anyway? I'm still here waitin' for you to get the balls to face me, 'n there you are, sayin' you'll just shoot me from a safe distance! What the heck!" 

It would be unfair, and most importantly, untrue, to say that Saeki wasn't stung by the man's remark. His brow creased, and he shuddered, almost like taking an insult to his valour was like taking a bitter dose of medicine, and his fury flushed up about his ears as he replaced his arrow in his quiver, and slung his bow back over his shoulder. "So it's a staff fight now, is it?" Saeki grumbled, and the man on the bridge laughed with disbelief. 

"That's what I've been sayin'!!" 

"I don't have a staff!" Saeki called. 

"Well, then ya came to the wrong village, huh." came the reply. 

"No, I heard there was a great weapons master in that there village," Saeki pointed over the bridge, but the stance of his opponent changed as he spoke, "and I've come to speak to him. Let me see him, I bet HE has a staff I can borrow!" 

Saeki's eyesight was good enough to notice how the creases on his opponent's brow had multiplied, and he seethed with ragged breaths through clenched teeth, and when he spoke, his anger frothed at his mouth so that his voice was wet and raspy, and he spat into the river. He said, "Ya don't know what yer talkin' about, ya don't know squat!" but as a denial, it was worthless, so Saeki smirked and checked his nails for dirt. 

"So there IS a weapons master in your village! That's good to hear! I don't have time to fight with you now, but if you let me see him--" Saeki looked up, and the man had dashed all the way to his side of the bridge, swinging his staff in an elegant arc that knocked Saeki squarely in the stomach and sent him flying back towards the road. 

The man with the staff spat, and he said, "Sorry, I don't like hittin' unarmed guys. Told ya to get a staff if ya wanted a fair shot! Warned ya!" He was breathing heavily now, but steadily regaining composure. He looked about to turn back and stand at his post, at the centre of the bridge, but then he thought twice and looked back at Saeki. "And, no, you're wrong. There's no weapons master in that village. Just a buncha kids and an old man. So staff or no, you can turn back to where ya came from now, and have an end to it." Saeki blinked, and before his eyes, the man strode back to the middle of the bridge, holding out his staff lengthways in defence. 

Saeki eased himself off the ground, bracing his arm around his bruised stomach as he moved. He got to his feet and staggered over to the nearest tree. It was hard, what with wincing in pain and all, but he used his unoccupied hand to measure, in comparison with the span of his thumb and finger, which branch of the tree was longest yet thin and low enough for him to harvest, and so decided, he began the literal painstaking task -- for he was in a great deal of pain, indeed -- of climbing to the branch to hack it off with his dagger. And Saeki, walking most tentatively with an arm protecting his stomach, and near dragging a tree branch as long as he was tall, with fresh spring buds and young leaves still shivering at its tip, was a most peculiar sight, and this we know from the great bellyful of laughter the man on the bridge gave out when he saw Saeki. 

"Alright. I've got a staff. So, I just have to beat you and I can get into the village, right?" Saeki said, in a strained voice. The man on the bridge laughed so much he was near breathless. 

"That's… that's a branch," he said, calming enough to raise a doubtful eyebrow, and his tone turned critical, "like are ya stupid?" 

"If I was any good at making weapons, I wouldn't want to get into your village so desperately now, would I?" Saeki said, not without annoyance. 

"And I told ya already, there's no 'weapons master' here!" The man lowered his staff and leant it against his chest so he could wiggle his fingers dismissively, "But whatever, ya got a death wish, I can knock some sense into ya!" And his body dropped into a fighter's stance, shoulders raised and knees bent, one hand ready with his staff, and the other outstretched, braced and ready for an attack. Saeki took him on, rushing forward with the leafy end of his staff pointed at his opponent -- who stood perfectly still. The twig-end bent when it hit against his chest and snapped, harmlessly. Saeki drew his staff back and frowned at its new shape, but he hadn't the time to quip, because his opponent brought the end of his staff down with good force to the crown of Saeki's head. Saeki wheeled, arms flailing over the sides of the narrow bridge, and he teetered at the edge for a second, when instinct kicked in, and he crouched, clinging with both hands to his staff which he forced against the bridge. 

By degrees, Saeki steadied himself, and he let one hand free to rub his offended head as he scowled up at his opponent. "I'll give you that one," Saeki said, and his opponent scoffed. 

"Mate, it's done. Ain't no style points or nothin', come at me, ya get hit, that's all." 

"It was still a good shot," Saeki said, in a low grumble. 

His opponent laughed, "Obviously!" he said, "but you can still walk away if ya want. Comin' at me with that thing--" he pushed his arm through the air, pointing at Saeki's pathetic tree branch with emphasis and a hearty laugh, "ya proved ya got guts already! Nothin' else for ya here but more of a beatin'." 

"No," said Saeki, straining to get to his feet, "There's still the weapons master. I meant it when I said I have to meet him at all costs, even if I've got to get my skull rearranged." 

The man on the bridge tensed again, just for a second, and then he gave out a long, tired sigh. "I can see you're eager for a swim," he muttered, just loud enough for Saeki to catch it. 

"What--" but Saeki soon found out. There was a loud whoosh, like the spring wind caught in the windmill sails, but closer and more immediate. It ended in a crack like a thunderclap, and Saeki's head stung hot again, and he reeled, but then the whooshing came again, and Saeki put what was left of his staff out blindly into its path, and then the bones of Saeki's hands ached and pounded, and he lost grip on his weapon. Then there was a crack, and it was a shot of searing pain shooting up his leg from his ankle, and he saw the river welcoming him from below. 

The shock of the water helped focus him, distracting Saeki from the pain. He got his head above the water, spitting a great mouthful of it out, and staring up at the bridge with clouded vision. The man on the bridge was leaning just far enough to peer into the river after Saeki. "Had enough?" he said. Saeki groaned. "Please tell me you've had enough," he said, his brow creasing with feeling, "I don't actually wanna kill a dude, so c'mon." He let down the end of his staff so Saeki could use it to heave himself onto the riverbank, and Saeki didn't have so much pride as to refuse it. 

Saeki coughed all the water out of his lungs, and stared up at the bridge. "I know you're lying. About the weapons master." His opponent flinched, and then groaned again, clenching his fists around his staff. "Look! I get it," Saeki said, "I couldn't beat you. I have no right to ask to enter the village. But I need the master's help!" 

"Yeah, don't we all?" The man on the bridge rolled his neck again and spat, "Don't we all need a little help sometimes, and don't we all do our damndest, but like. Where is it when ya need it?" he shook his head, "I need help too, but whatever man, sometimes ya can only do anythin' to help yerself." 

Saeki watched the droplets of water spilling off his clothes and onto the grass below him. "Maybe I can help?" 

"Oh yeah, nice try!" His opponent said, folding his arms and turning his head away. 

A few moments of silence passed between them. Saeki remembered the horn strapped to his belt and tipped all the water out of it. He put it to his lips, and before the man on the bridge could question him about it, he'd blown three great loud notes on it. 

"The hell was that? You a bard or somethin'?" The man on the bridge said, with his eyebrow raised. Saeki shrugged. The man shrugged back. "Alright. Weird." And then, from somewhere in the distance, there was a loud and clear scream. A high scream, a war cry, a long, defiant, aaaaaaaaaaa, gaining in intensity as it came along with the wind. Saeki looked over his shoulder. There he was. A little red speck in the distance, running hell for leather with his sword already drawn, only stopping and slowing every so often to catch his breath, before starting out again with another, aaaaaaa! Saeki exchanged looks with the man on the bridge. "Frienda yours?"

"Yeah, he's my knight in shining armour!" Saeki said, with a little smile. The man on the bridge pointed to the rapidly approaching figure and then pointed back at Saeki, as if to say, you called backup?? But Saeki went, "I suppose he's my knight in a red tunic, but you know. Baby steps." 

And Kentaroh, running apace, reached the village entrance, and when he saw Saeki, beaten and soaked, he gasped and he said, "Sae-san! Do you want me to fight this man!?" and the fire blazing in his eyes and spirit told Saeki that he would, too. 

"I couldn't beat him, Ken, do what you have to!" 

The man on the bridge said, "W-wait, what?" but he readied his staff, as Kentaroh charged him, the very point of his sword aimed for the man's gut. The man waved his staff, but hesitated, even as Kentaroh got ever nearer, he said, "Oh God, I can't!" and Kentaroh got in close, raising his sword above his head-- and was pelted back onto the riverbank, next to Saeki, by a mighty kick aimed right at his stomach. 

Saeki gaped from one to the other. Kentaroh writhed on the grass clutching his stomach, and the man on the bridge wiped the sweat off his forehead and breathed a sigh of relief. "I can't crack the skull of a kid, he's… he's just a little kid, y'know!" 

"How old are you?" Saeki said, and the man laughed and replied with a, fair enough. 

Kentaroh spoke through gritted teeth, "Is he the weapons master?" and Saeki shook his head, "Maybe we should ask him to join us anyway." Saeki stared at Kentaroh. Kentaroh looked up at the man on the bridge, "Hey you're pretty good at fighting!" 

"Thanks," the man said, "I like your tunic. It's a nice colour." Kentaroh pulled on the fabric and smiled with pride. 

Saeki piped up, "I can get you a tunic like that -- we could all get them, we'd match--" the man on the bridge waved his hand to stop Saeki from speaking.

"Woah, wait, like, just let us in the village, I'll buy you a tunic? It ain't gonna work! I told ya, there's no master dude in there! Just a buncha kids, and an old man," there was a small pause, "and me, obviously." 

Kentaroh giggled, "Aw, I kinda thought you meant you were the old man!" 

"Hey, watch it!" The man on the bridge said, laughing, "How old d'ya think I am??" and the two of them laughed as if he hadn't just been treating Kentaroh like a child of several years younger than him.   
But while they were laughing and joking, Saeki played the man's words over again in his head.

"So," Saeki said, to get the others to stop their chattering, "there's no master in the village?" 

"Right," said the man. 

"So… where IS he, then?" 

"Shut up! I ain't fallin' for that, he ain't here is all!" and then the man groaned at himself and smacked his forehead with his palm. 

"But he WAS here?" Saeki went on, "You DO know the master?" 

The man growled and buried his face in his palms. Through them he said, "I ain't answerin' ya, don't even ask me, I won't say nothin' else!" 

Kentaroh flung his arm into the air "Hey I have a question!!" he said, bright and cheery as ever, and the man on the bridge said, what?, perhaps before he could stop himself, "What's your name?" 

The man on the bridge stared at him, then he stared at Saeki, and Saeki stared at Kentaroh, who was waiting patiently for an answer. The man cleared his throat, and he said, "Uh. I'm Kurobane. Well. Bane. Call me Bane." 

"I see!" Kentaroh said, holding his chin with one hand and nodding, the perfect image of thoughtfulness, "Then I'll call you Bane-san! Hiya Bane-san!" Kentaroh waved at Bane, and Bane waved back, smiling but with a doubtful look on his face. "I'm Kentaroh! This here is Saeki, I call him Sae-san!" He pointed to Saeki, without looking away from Bane. Saeki and Bane gave each other a slight nod of acknowledgement. "Bane-san, I have another question!!" Kentaroh raised his arm and waved it about in the air, "If the master's not in the village, why won't you let us in?" 

Bane stumbled for an answer, and Saeki made a loud exclamation, "So he IS here after all! You nearly had me fooled, too!" Saeki shook his head, seemingly at himself. 

"For the last time he's NOT HERE!" Bane rushed forward and clonked both Saeki and Kentaroh on the head with the very tip of his staff, "Believe me, I wish he were here. I want 'im here more than anyone! But he's gone, and I can't help ya, so why don'tcha leave me and my village alone already!" Bane crossed his arms around his staff, and his face had a dejected quality of sorts, almost like he was sulking. 

"Where has he gone?" Saeki asked in a quiet voice, while rubbing his sore head. Bane closed his eyes and heaved a long sigh. 

"Nowhere by choice. The sheriff paid us a visit last winter, only he wasn't satisfied with our flour or our tax money. He wanted a weapons master, an' he took every able villager besides as a bonus." Bane was scowling down at his feet with a most hateful countenance. "'cept, I wasn't there, I couldn't protect 'im. Couldn't protect anyone," with a whoosh, Bane sprang to life again, cracking his staff hard against the bridge and pointing the end out at Kentaroh and Saeki, "so I'll be damned if I don't protect them kids now!!" 

But Saeki didn't waver in front of his challenge. He did not even flinch. "The sheriff has him at Nottingham castle? Then we'd better get him out of there, and fast!" He pushed himself off the grass and got to his feet. He turned to Kentaroh and offered him a hand to help him stand. "If the sheriff has these legendary weapons, there's no telling how much trouble he could be to us. We have to make our move, and quickly!" 

Bane lowered his staff. His eyes were narrowed, "'scuse me? Ya mean… You're gonna… You're gonna get him outta there?"

"I have no other choice," Saeki said, taking a step towards the bridge, "Like I told you before, I need his help at all costs--" 

"--But you don't even know him?" Bane said, the words dropping from his mouth in a rush of disbelief and hope, "Why would you put yerself at risk--" Saeki put his hand out and patted Bane's shoulder, and Bane wrinkled his nose. 

"I'm not afraid of a little risk, and finding the help of this master is my target. I never miss a target." He flashed Bane a smile, and Bane wrinkled his nose even more. 

"You're serious?" Saeki nodded at Bane, and Bane shook his head, and he said, "Cool, when do we leave then?" 

Thus the largest of the Merry Men, with a giant's body and a giant's heart, the one the world has come to know as Little Bane, was brought into the greenwood fold. A loyal and truer ally or friend there was none, for 'twas brave Saeki Hood and wilful Kentaroh Scarlett who would return that most precious one to Little Bane, his dearest friend of whom we shall hear more in songs to come. It is said that for this deed, Little Bane was more indebted to the Merry Men than he would had it been his own life so imperilled, and for them a better warrior would he be than he ever could have been, so relieved was he to have his treasured one returned to him. Yet of this, by and by, nay, in some future time, we shall hear better, for now it is time to hear of the sheriff and his shameful cronies, in a tale that must be sung by the one I am fain to call my most dear, for he is the most alike to me as my shadow, and more akin to me as e'er two brothers were.


	4. Identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Saeki Hood and his merry band of followers conspire to free the legendary weapons master from Nottingham Castle, another agent is at work, trying to arrange the very same outcome... But being locked in the tower himself, he has absolutely no idea that Saeki Hood even exists! A Saeki-free chapter, but I assure you, the great hero of the wood, along with our normal narrator, will return in due course!

Alack! Alas! My brother bids me sing,  
Of Sheriff most foul and traitor to the King  
And of his band, militia-men, seduced by greed and power  
And of one weapons-master, imprisoned in a tower

Alack! Alas! For all I sing is true,  
Verily mine eyes did such a moment view;  
For I did dwell amongst them then, the blackguards in that castle  
And of them, yea, I'll tell anon, though 'tis an awful hassle! 

 

Nay, how could it have been! There was a time, and yet, a place, and indeed persons therein who had not heard of the brave and good outlaw, friend to the low people and enemy to the state, that much vaulted Saeki Hood and his allies. It is of such a time, a place, and of such persons that I now speak. There was, in one particular spring, when the birds would swoop for one's headgear, and the trees had the audacity to reach for parts of your unsuspecting person with cloying green fingertips, there was, I say, a man coerced into the tower at Nottingham castle. He was, but for a show of his own word, uprooted from his home and from the person he held most dear, on account of a particular mastery he was said to have in a certain art. He was bound by the chief of that castle, then an odious Sheriff, name of Kite, never to exit the walls of the fortress. And he was forced, no less, to while away his time in that place, dreaming most fanciful dreams of escape or rescue, and caring for his most beautiful head of hair that was the envy of all who e'er saw him. I speak, of course, of myself. 

It was in this spring, as I sought new and fresh ways to break the boredom that came with my long captivity, wandering the many halls and dungeons of that castle, that I happened upon a cell containing a man who was called a weapons-master. His lodgings were scarcely big enough to be called a chamber, and indeed they were empty but for the man himself and a light bedding of straw strewn over the cold stone floor. The sole entrance to this garderobe was a door made from interwoven bars of metal, which quite prevented the prisoner from exit and privacy alike; and thus I espied him. Sat in the narrow pool of light afforded by a single shaft window on the wall above: he, gazing with tireless spirit at this only portal to the outside world, his strong shoulders lowered in defeat and hands joined over his lap by way of heavy manacles. So taken was he with his occupation of waiting on that window -- or perhaps, so used to his rather inhospitable dwelling -- that he neither started nor stirred at my approach, nor did he flinch to hear my hand shake the metal.

Guards there were, of course, but none so directly concerned with our weapons-master, that I couldn't place my hands on the metal piping of his cage and lean in to offer a few words of agitation. "What are you in for?" said I, but even so, could not get the man to turn his face. In the gloom and silence of that place, I thought him perhaps too stony to answer, but then, with the sort of rasp in the throat that denoted lack of use, that calm deep voice returned: 

"Most of my village were taken. I didn't want to be left OUT." This last spake he with such force that it sounded from his chest with a note of purpose. And then, those shoulders twitched as he caught and stifled his own laugh in his mouth, so as not to stir the chamber. Immediately my brow creased, and I leant both hands against the crossing bar of the gate, so my fingers dangled into the cell. 

"Nobody locked up in this tower is here by accident, my good fellow," I went on, "For what purpose could the Sheriff want you?" There was silence again in that chamber, so I rattled the door to pressure him. He was not, in the least, pressured. 

"The Sheriff, he was impressed by my arms," he said this, and in the blue glow from the arrowslit, and the ripped fabric of his shirt, I could well ken how the Sheriff might have sought this man for a strong-arm in his militia. But the prisoner laughed in his mouth, and said, "arms, as in weapons. So he asked me to STICK around." He laughed again, and then gasped and apologised: "You wouldn't get that, never mind. He, um. He AXED me to make him some weapons. I said I'd give it a SHOT." 

I raised an eyebrow at his peculiar way of speaking, but I had it now. This man was no doubt wise beyond his years, for here was that captured weapons-master I had heard the Sheriff's men crowing about. In truth, my mind's eye had envisioned one much more sage-like than the robust youth in the cage before me; but then, weaponry was not my art and I could not deign to speak lightly of it. "So, you are the one they have called weapons-master?" I paused, but he gave neither movement nor noise of acknowledgement. "They have spared no expense for you, I see," I nodded towards his cell, "with such a comfortable chamber to lay your head in!" 

I saw him blink slowly. "The Sheriff… hasn't been very knife." And again he spluttered. My patience was being tried. 

"Are you just going to sit there making puns about weapons?" Evidently this was the wrong question to ask, even in irritation, for the reply came,

"I could make puns about something else, but you're not giving me very much AMMUNITION." 

I growled, but that growl was lost in the metal screech of the tower door swinging open and in the jingling approach of guards. I busied myself in some business at the far end of the hall. Seeing to the shift change of the guards at that end, enquiring after the night-watch, and would perhaps one of you be so kind as to find where my messenger has gone? Indeed, I thought him here, shying his work? Such as this I took upon myself, with ears ever ready to discover the purposes of the guards and militia-men who had come up to the cell of the weapons-master. The militia-men were two of those generals who the Sheriff favoured best; one improbably large in all aspects, even in the booming voice; the other, he whose hair resembled a flaxen roof, and one most improperly thatched at that. 

The large one, Tanishi by name, put his great meaty hands on the bars of the cell and rattled with a monstrous energy. In comparison to my provocation, this movement was much larger, and louder, and violent -- perhaps akin to how much larger, and louder and violent Tanishi was in comparison to myself. I could hear the light showering of stone and dust from the door's casing as it shook, but to his credit I heard not a peep from the prisoner. And neither did Tanishi, for his voice blasted every wall of that tower: "Wakey-wakey!! Rise and shine!!" This he said to no purpose, as the morning was already far advanced, and it is my supposition that it had advanced this far because he had dallied overmuch at the breakfast-table, but I digress. "Time to earn 's keep!" There was no movement in that cell, so the straw-haired one, a certain Hirakoba, smacked one of the guards over the head. 

"Ay, gets-ye th'key, wilthi?" I admit, my sensitive ears, grown accustomed to speech from the Capital tongue, failed to decipher this utterance, and I turned my face toward the sound. The guard stood trembling, failing much as I had, to understand Hirakoba. He clicked his tongue, and said with a most scornful effort, "Find us that key! Gettit open, will ya?" The guard scurried at the lock, and Tanishi smirked down at Hirakoba. "Laugh it up, fatty!" Hirakoba said, aiming a hard fist at the pit of Tanishi's plentiful stomach. 

Hirakoba stood, watching Tanishi cough dramatically, and wipe his watering eyes. "I'll remember that!" Tanishi sulked his way into the cell -- well, he sulked under the entrance, and stuck out his tree-trunk of an arm and pulled the weapons-master up by his manacles. "C'mon, swine, out to pasture now!" When he'd fished the prisoner out of the cell, Tanishi put his mighty hand at the flat of his back and encouraged him in the direction of the guards. 

"Heck, we've even got a forge for piggy to play in!" Hirakoba had a laugh like the shriek of a water-fowl.

"That would be a test of my METAL," the prisoner said, and as they caught on to the joke, Hirakoba and Tanishi gave a simultaneous and very irritated, huh?!, "There's a problem I must IRON out, but I'm afraid you may lose your TEMPER," the guards held this prisoner, one on each of his arms, at the door to the tower stairwell, while with each utterance, the faces of the two militia-men became ever more distorted. "I must STEEL myself, however, as there's been a SMITH-stake… like a mistake, get it?" 

The disgust on Tanishi's face turned to distress, "Oh God he's not stopping, how do we stop the jokes??"

"I tell you, COPPER, my skills are second to none… I promised, ANVIL, make weapons… but I can't do that in the forge. I just don't HEARTH the knowledge." 

The two militia-men looked at one another, and Tanishi, squinting, muttered, so that means…? And Hirakoba slapped the prisoner over the back of the head and yelled, "What the heck kind of weapons-master can't actually use a forge??" 

And Tanishi flapped his pudgy hands and hissed, "You're not supposed to hit 'im!! We don't need 'im to start acting up!!" 

The prisoner raised his head in a movement that was slow and tremulous, but he looked into the eyes of his captors, and said, "After all, I should have held my tongs… they use tongs in a forge, right? Tongs?" 

"TONGS!!" Tanishi roared with a sudden burst of energy, "We gotta take 'im to the Sheriff right away!! Something's just not right about this guy!" The whole rabble of two guards, two militia-men, and the one unfortunate prisoner (and with him went his vast array of even more unfortunate puns), jostled each other on the narrow turn of the tower stairs, and landed at the floor below, all most remarkably unscathed. I, in my turn, busied myself with more trivial questions, and my messenger-boy was returned to me, bursting with apologies and other fervent exclamations. Yes, I put a coin in his hand and whispered in his ear, and off he dashed, to tell something or other, to someone or other, somewhere or other. I then spent a good few moments inspecting the very tips of my hair for splits. Then, by some profound coincidence, I remembered a most pressing issue I had to speak with the Sheriff about, and outside the heavy doors of the Sheriff's office is where I found myself. 

Yes, heavy though the doors were, no wood or perhaps even metal could have been thick enough to contain the excitement of the agitated voices within. I paused, with my back to one of the fine tapestries the Sheriff had taken a liking to, and thought it an acceptable fabric to place between my hair and the dusty castle wall. I could hear without much effort, both militia-men inside the room, voicing their objections about the prisoner… but from the prisoner I heard not a thing. I was somewhat relieved he had the sense to stay quiet before the Sheriff.

"I just knew somethin' wasn't right when we sacked that village, Eishirou!" This from Tanishi, who, a second later, coughed and corrected himself: "Sheriff. Sheriff Eishirou." 

"Shut yer trap, fatso, you were too busy smashing stuff to notice! I said, didn't I? He's awful young-lookin' for a master!" This was Hirakoba's voice. He said that last word with a kind of grunt, and a third voice let out a cry, as if he had been hit or shoved, and the Sheriff broke in among them. 

"Hirakoba-kun, I have told you more than once already, but that prisoner is not to be treated with violence," the Sheriff had a cold, polite voice, with which he took great joy in saying rather barbaric things, as he did when he went on to say, "We found out very quickly that he isn't to be persuaded like that. He doesn't seem to fear it as another man might," he chuckled lightly, as if he spoke of a peculiar dog who wasn't fond of meat, rather than a prisoner in his captivity. 

Hirakoba made a very loud and very scornful noise, "Then how am I supposed to treat 'im? What gets to 'im?" But the Sheriff laughed and hushed his man. 

"Patience. Who is to say there is any need for any such… methods? I am a civilised man, and I engage only in civilised conversation." I should, for clarity, state that neither of these statements were true. "Come now, you say he is no weapons-master, but all he says is that he is no smith. Dare I ask why you think there is a contradiction here?" Silence now, from the Sheriff's office, and I leaned off the wall and looked all the more intently at the doors, as if that might persuade them to speak. The silence was finally broken by Sheriff Kite, "Indeed, I was not expecting a smith, I will admit. Pray -- what was it? Amane-kun? -- Pray, tell me where it is your real skill lies?" 

And that steady deep voice rose up from within the room, "I… have CARVED a name for myself, as a carpenter, and creator of the finest wooden armaments in all the land." This he spoke, and I winced in sympathy… perhaps, in sympathy for the Sheriff, although that would be a fine and rare sentiment indeed. There was a great and heavy silence after this, until the Sheriff broke it. 

"…Quite." he said. From within the room there was a low murmur, whose owner I could not identify from my position, but the conversation that followed was thus: first, Sheriff Kite spoke, "Is there some sort of problem, Hirakoba-kun? Hm? Do you have a problem with wooden armaments?" There was a denial piped up between these questions, and the Sheriff went on, "Are you perhaps under the impression that weapons carved of wood could not serve us well?" 

"It's just! The Prince-King arms his men with steel!" I must admit my eyebrows raised to hear so freely exclaimed the biggest secret no one in the castle would claim to know.

"Hirakoba-kun, please mind your tone, and, if you please, your volume." The word volume was spoken with an appropriate hush, and thereafter, I could not pick out any more words. I waited for a time, taking the carved wooden comb from where it held my hair and letting it glide its way to the ends, before pinning it back again. Then I approached the door and knocked. "Enter!" called the Sheriff, and I obliged. 

The picture the room availed me was as follows. The Sheriff sat behind his heavy writing-table, straight-backed in his seat, regarding me through the rivet-spectacles pinched on his nose. Before the table were the three men: the most unfortunate weapons-master with the two militia-men on either side, each gripping a hand around their prisoner's elbow. Each turned and acknowledged me with the level of respect each believed I deserved. For Hirakoba, this was a short snarl, and for Tanishi, a quick snort. The prisoner, who we have heard the Sheriff call Amane -- although that is not the name that history has come to learn -- glanced at me over his shoulder, without daring to move his head. The Sheriff offered me a most gracious and most false smile, and he made an elegant, sweeping motion with his gloved hand, and I, not insensible to such, in turn bowed to him as low as I knew his ego felt he warranted. "Sheriff Kite," I said, in greeting, and he returned,

"Kisarazu-kun, what news?" The Sheriff sat forward, quill in hand, ready for my report. This was, in any event, the usual procedure when I visited the Sheriff in his office, and Hirakoba and Tanishi knew it, and scoffed and rolled their eyes, and muscled their prisoner out of the way, for my counsel took precedence over the three of them combined. 

"Your Excellency," -- I often began thus, as the Sheriff was most pleased by it, though he could rightfully demand no such address -- "It appears my messenger boy has discovered a most talented warrior frequenting the taverns of Nottingham." Here the Sheriff sat forward with interest. "Indeed, the boy appears to be quite taken with him, yes." 

"Have this man brought before me," Sheriff Kite said, his tone sharp but lacking irritation (as of yet). He set down his quill without writing anything, and folded his hands over the paper, as if that settled the meeting. I bowed my apology. 

"There is, however, an issue with this man." I took up the tips of my hair and pulled them through my fingers as I spoke, and the Sheriff smoothed a hand into his hair as an unconscious reaction. "It appears he is, I might say, QUITE opposed to Your Excellency, I am afraid." I glanced up to catch the Sheriff's anger flare up in his eyes before he muted it again. 

"And is this fellow also 'quite' opposed to gold coin?" He said, his rolling eyes ever more frightful through the view of his convex lenses. "Have this man brought before me ere sundown!" I bit down my objections and questions, and nodded with a kind of hesitance a man as sharp as Sheriff Kite would not fail to notice. "Do you have a problem with my little request, Kisarazu-kun?" 

I held up my index finger, "Just a slight one, Your Excellency. I have not moments ago, sent my messenger boy on another pressing errand, and he shall not be back before the dawn." The Sheriff trembled with concealed rage once more, and I felt a smirk tugging at my lips. 

"Kisarazu-kun, do you have the gall to presume to know which errands are more pressing than my own direct orders?" The leather of his glove squeaked as he clenched his fist on top of the desk. "Of which pressing errand do you speak!?" 

I bowed my head to appease him with respect. "Your Excellency, pardon me, for I do presume to know, and it is an errand which concerns the present company," I offered a hand towards the three men, locked together in a not-so-patient silence, who shuffled and gasped to be spoken of so abruptly. Sherriff Kite's eyes followed the line of my hand, and then he turned a most vexed countenance back to me, and he muttered, Proceed. I smiled, "Gladly, I shall. My messenger boy has been sent to the trading outpost that lies half a day's walk from Nottingham town. It is an outpost where persons from this so-called," I stressed the following title, "weapons-master's village, are wont to go to trade supplies and information. My boy is on an errand there, to gather information as to the authenticity of this weapons-master." 

Sherriff Kite scowled, and Amane gasped and flinched, for the first time moved by a provocation. But this was, of course, an untruth. A ruse, one might say. My boy had instead been sent to speak to my Loyalist contact -- that is, the group Loyal to the Right and True King of the Realm, to which the well-regarded Sir Fuji also belongs -- to inform them of the presence of this weapons-master, and to suggest actions to bring about his immediate removal from the Sheriff's stronghold. Of course, how the Holy Lady would chuckle to know what mischief she weaves, for had my messenger been sent to the outpost as I had suggested, I would have discovered the plot of that Brave and Bold, and by-the-by Insufferable, outlaw known as Saeki Hood, and how he was, indeed, working towards the same end as I. But of this rube I then knew not, and so, to my own purpose I worked, all in the name of the True King. 

My ploy had been successful in provoking this next utterance from the Sherriff: "Kisarazu-kun, do you doubt my judgment? Do you doubt that my officers were incapable of capturing the true weapons-master? Do you, perhaps, insinuate that I, Sherriff Kite of Nottingham, am not capable of detecting a liar in my presence?!" 

I bowed most solemnly, but of course, did not say, yes, the Sherriff was indeed quite incapable of that.

Instead, I spoke thus. "Pardon, Your Excellency, but it is not I who doubts. Word has reached me from the ranks of your militia, and it appears that there have been a great many murmurs of distrust regarding the identity of the weapons-master. I, for one, believe most wholeheartedly in Your Excellency's judgement, and can see right and well that the man who stands before us now is undoubtedly the master we sought." I chanced to raise my face to see if the Sherriff had been soothed by this. He held a hand under his chin most thoughtfully, but said nothing, so I proceeded, "I act now, merely out of consideration for your position, and that I shall suffer no mutterings of dissent to work against Your Excellency. Therefore, I felt it my duty to investigate these rumours myself, before they have taken too strong a root in the hearts and minds of your followers, who might grow to bear their fangs against you." 

Sherriff Kite was silent for a time, ever a wicked glint in his eye behind his spectacle lens. At last he said, "You are quite right. Thank you, Kisarazu-kun, for your loyal service," here I bowed with great humility, "and I understand how well placed I would be should I let you handle this little… errand… for me. Quite right." The Sherriff clasped his begloved hands behind the small of his back and strode with impossible quickness to the three men who had been waiting in the corner. He tilted his head as he examined them, but addressed me, "Kisarazu-kun, I should be much obliged were I to discover… whom amongst my militia would dare to court such vicious rumours?" 

But, it sufficed not to give an answer, for Hirakoba pushed his prisoner aside with much alacrity and struck Tanishi across the cheek. "If tha'd haif a brain thedbi an ape! Asthi fergeet ah shut meawth keeps flies eawt?" Tanishi reeled, clutching his cheek, I suspect more from the surprise of the attack than from its force, for Hirakoba was much smaller than he. I regret to impart that I was at a loss to the precise meaning of Hirakoba's message, but the northern tongue was not lost on Tanishi who replied,

"Ah'll snatchthi breath!" and made a wild lunge for Hirakoba's neck with his powerful hands. Amane dodged out of the way, and I took the opportunity to lead him towards the office door by his manacles. 

"Silence!!" Sherriff Kite's voice was enough to put an end to the brawl that had, in but a few short moments, already made good headway in destroying his office. 

"Your Excellency, I would consider it most unwise to keep the weapons-master in the hands of such volatile persons," I put my word in quickly, but the Sherriff was much too preoccupied in re-establishing the discipline of his followers to really pay my words much heed, "besides, you know of my methods. Perhaps while I conduct my investigation, I should be the one to escort him to the courtyard?" The Sherriff glanced over his shoulder and waved a dismissive glove of consent, and then immediately caught himself. He turned to me, a most curious and perplexed look staring down through the lenses of his spectacles. 

"My dear Kisarazu-kun, the weapons-master, however cooperative, is still our prisoner, and liable to chance his escape at any moment. You surely cannot believe that you might withstand him if he dared to attack you?" Sheriff Kite had his head tilted back, all the more suspicious of my plan because he had almost consented to it quite of his own volition. I sighed deeply to show that I regretted the size of my stature. I was, of course, not made for combat or brute strength, any more than the Sherriff was made for justness.

"A boon, a small favour, if you will, Your Excellency. I had hoped that Sir Fuji might aid me in that respect, for he is much better prepared for such incidents than I, and between us we might make excellent guardsmen." So it was that the Sherriff, with much narrowing of his eyes, did summon for Sir Fuji to help me in escorting Amane the weapons-master to the courtyard, where tools and timber had been made ready for him to begin his work. 

I interpose myself here to note that this was not the same Sir Fuji that bold, and intolerable, Saeki Hood had met in the frosts of winter. This was indeed, Sir Fuji the Younger. Each time I came across this fellow he seemed flushed up to the face with earnestness, and a readiness to do good with everything that was possessed of his soul. And he was, of course, much devoted to his older brother, and in that I was reminded most fondly of my own brother, and so I had sworn to keep my eyes on this young knight. My messenger boy was sent off to some contact outside the city most nights, most often with a message for Sir Fuji the Elder, concerning the general welfare of his brother, though the younger brother was none the wiser for it, indeed. 

"Kisarazu-san, you can rest at ease, for I won't allow this prisoner to harm a hair on your head!" This Sir Fuji the Younger, known to history by his forename, Yuuta, said to me with a grin most confidence-inspiring. And by its wording I was most moved, and I ran my fingers through my gorgeous black locks and smiled my appreciation. "Should he threaten you, I am prepared to do what I must!" 

I laughed my soft laugh, and watched the weapons-master Amane for any signs of fear, but he was once again absent of them. "Sir Fuji, I leave all in your trusty hands. Though, I doubt it would come to that. I asked for you in order to allay the Sherriff's fears more than my own." 

Yuuta raised his eyebrows at this. "I had no idea the Sherriff was so fond of you," he said, in the way he was wont to do -- almost without thinking. My laugh was quite sharp, and Yuuta flushed up and caught himself. "I-I mean, of course I know you are of high regard in this castle--" 

"Hush," said I, "it is not such a bad thing that you speak as earnestly as you do, Sir Fuji. In fact, I am almost envious." The small party made up of the three of us: myself, and Sir Fuji escorting the weapons-master Amane by the manacles, had by this point reached the last portcullis that separated castle and courtyard. It was, as ever, a bustling scene, with guards at each entryway to question the deliveries that arrived from the city, and with much activity of stablemen and of pages, and the uneasy edge to the air that came from the militia-men, sharpening their weapons and spitting, and cursing at great volume. There were other captives, too, the weapons-master beside, who had found their workstations in the great courtyard -- many of them starved and indeed, too weak or too frail to carry out their designated task with any real skill or efficiency. As we walked through these labourers, Amane looked about keenly, as if trying to discover the faces of those held there, but as to whether or not he was successful in this I do not know, for he was reticent as ever. 

As we reached the work station set out for the weapons-master, Yuuta released his grip on the prisoner's manacles, and encouraged him, by way of a gentle nudge, to take his place at the bench. Designs and specifications had been left in bundles of parchment in a box beside his materials, and Amane lifted the topmost one and spread it out on the counter with a flourish. Yuuta stood back, holding his hands neatly at the small of his back so that his proud and shining breastplate struck out and caught the glint of the sun. And he waited. So, too, did I. And Sir Fuji the Younger shot me a polite, questioning smile, and I, in turn, shot him a look that questioned, and waited for its answer. 

Which did not come. 

"My dear Sir Fuji, thank you," I said, but Yuuta gave me but a brief thanks and resumed his benevolent watch on the prisoner. "The weapons-master is now at work, he has been delivered most safely. I will send word to the Sherriff expressing such." I bowed my thanks, and Yuuta -- well-bred and most pleasant of fellows -- bowed his return, but resumed his post. Thus I changed my tactics, as one in my field of artistry was ever prepared to do: "I should also like to write to your dearest brother, Sir Fuji the Elder, and inform him of how well you have developed in the Sherriff's service." 

It took but a brief mention of his elder brother to cause an affront. Knocked from his position of composure, his steady, proud pose crumpled in a clanking of armour and a most ghastly contortion of his brow. "Kisarazu-san, I would ask you not to mention that traitorous wretch to me." The words he spoke were violent, but the force behind them, the voice, the tone, was measured. He sounded, and for all appearances became, tired by the very act of conjuring his brother's existence from his memory. He remained, even in his anger towards his brother, a gentle knight who seemed not to want to enact the hatred that his tongue implied. 

"Traitorous? How so?" This I spoke, knowing that Yuuta had no knowledge, nor proof of the very real and present treachery in which his brother and indeed, I myself, were very much engaged. "For all my ears have heard, he is a most loyal servant to Prince-King Mizuki, and indeed, to all the great lords of the land." 

Yuuta wrapped his arms around himself, touching heavy leather gloves to the warmed metal of his gauntlets. "This is so," he said, most reluctantly, "but I am well aware that he does not pledge his true loyalty to our Prince-King, and therefore he is indeed, a traitor to our land." 

"Come, now," said I, aware that our mutterings had stirred the interest of the nearby militiamen, "There are many who have not yet accepted the Prince-King in their hearts, but hearts are won only in time." --Here I paused, searching the vast annals of my knowledge of courtly affairs, to find but one instance of benevolent leadership with which to sing the Prince-King's praises… and though I grasped, I grasped at nothing, and so faltering, I resumed, "I-in time, when the Prince-King has gone abroad, and walked among his people, and shown them his right and true majesty, then we shall see how soon their hearts will accept him." I patted Yuuta on the mail that covered his upper arm. "And for your brother, too, may it be so." 

The mid-morning spring sun, high above the courtyard, lent its warmth to those of us down below, and oh, how keenly I wished to take shelter! But it was not just I who wished to escape that heat: the weapons-master on the bench before me, raised one of his shackled wrists and wiped at his forehead, careful to avoid thrashing his face with the chain that trailed between each of his cuffs. Yuuta also, began to flush up at the collar, and beads of sweat were forming over the scar on his forehead. He spoke as such: "I don't care at all, for what my brother may or may not do," and there was a cold frustration to his words which failed to match the heated countenance, "I care only that the good name Fuji shall be known as a sworn and loyal protector of the realm -- and I shall ensure this with my own deeds. My brother shall do as he pleases; I will do as I must." 

There was a finality about this sentence that gave the image of Yuuta, carving his broadsword into the stone beneath his feet, and welcoming death sooner than he'd welcome retreat. And I flicked my hair with a carefree hand, for it was also an out. Said I, "As you should, Sir Fuji! Indeed, is it not true that I have waylaid you from your morning's duties, by asking you to accompany me here?" To this, Yuuta opened his eyes a little wider, his mouth dropping open in realisation, "Surely, you must make some report to the Prince-King about your duties? I daren't keep you from such an important task!" 

"Oh, you're right…" Yuuta said, with great reluctance, and he shook his head, "But I'm here to protect you now, in case the prisoner--" 

"Hush," I patted his armour again to soothe him, "It is a fine morning and I wish to stroll about the courtyard while the sun is out. You ought to return to your duties." Yuuta had no reasonable objection to this, and in a show of good faith, I began pacing between the rows of toiling prisoners, face turned upward as if I saw not their suffering, and by the time my rounds brought me back to Amane, the weapons-master, Yuuta had vanished. I chuckled under my breath and approached Amane, finally ready to begin my real work. 

He was bent low over the great table on which his plans for weaponry were spread, following along the drawn lines with his grubby finger, and the chain that connected his manacles clanked against the bench as his hand moved. I approached him from the opposite side of the table, my shadow cast over Amane's work causing him to glance up at me once more. I spoke in a whisper: "Keep working, but keep your ears open as you do; I have a proposition for you, which, I think you'll find, will benefit the both of us in good time." 

Amane looked back down at his work, "I'm already married," he muttered, dryly, it seemed just to prove I had his attention. I didn't bother laughing just to prove I'd heard his joke. 

"I'm sure you're perfectly at home thanks to the generosity and welcome of your most amiable host, the Sherriff--" I had barely finished speaking thus before I was cut off by a sharp, low, laugh from Amane, "But should you wish to take your leave of his hospitality, I have some acquaintances who would dearly love to be in the company of a renowned weapons-master…" I left a silence in which Amane could consider my words. 

When next came Amane's reply, he sounded and looked for all the world to be muttering about the weapon plans before him. "I shall welcome that offer with open ARMS… that is, I know that declining would be 'ARMless, while your intentions to the Sheriff are… 'ARMful…" I nodded along and wound my finger in the air, as one is wise in my trade not to waste words that might so easily be overheard and taken out of context by an enemy. But he went on, "I will make for you anything you wish, WE-A-PON," (I interpose myself, but he stretched the word 'weapon' out into the most vile imitation of the word he meant, which was, 'whereupon'.) "Whereupon, you must return me to my village. I can see you take care of your hair: this is my CONDITION." 

I was, in truth, startled by this utterance, and not just by his shocking attempts at humour. "Wise weapons-master, that simply cannot be done!" I heard my own astonishment and quickly cast my eyes about the courtyard lest our conversation be discovered, and then, slicking my hair back into place, I continued in a more appropriate volume, "If we succeed in disappearing you from within the Sherriff's clutches, he shall not be pleased. Indeed, he takes great pride in the fact that he has captured you; to return you to the very place he found you would be to return you swiftly to the Sherriff's men!" Amane raised his head from his work and looked up at me with a piteous look in his otherwise sharp eyes.

"Then… at least a message… Please, send a message to my village for me… I will do as you say, but promise me you will send my tidings…" 

"If it is really necessary, I suppose it can be done, but to whom?" I laughed sharply, quite before I could stop myself, and Amane fidgeted and looked down at his work. Watching him so cowed made me realise this was the first utterance of his I had heard which was not an attempt at jesting. "The Sherriff is not known for leaving survivors in his wake, not when it is easier to take them into his care instead," I gestured to the toiling figures around us, and Amane's eyes flicked about, and he bit into his thumbnail. 

After some time he said, "It's all I ask. It doesn't matter to me who has my weaponry. Arrange to send my message and I will do whatever it is you say." 

And so it came to be that my pact was made with the weapons-master, called Amane, but known to most under a different name as events will show. I hastened upon communicating my plans in secrecy to my trusted contact, who in turn would inform Sir Fuji the Elder, and I set in motion events that would see the weapons-master freed into the custody of the Loyalists ere the week was out. However, and it amuses me to reflect, the Holy Lady had other plans for our so-called weapons-master, as my dear brother will tell. His next is a song of a very different plot, of a not dissimilar aim, but of a much dissimilar execution… and how such successes can be wrestled from the jaws of defeat, I dare say, we shall learn in time.


End file.
